Recently for Easter dinner, I made a batch of Hollandaise sauce from scratch to go with the blanched asparagus that was one of the surprises I had planned for my friends and family. I haven’t made it at home or professionally in quite some time but the process came back to me easily and despite forgetting that I had no lemon juice in the house (horrors!), it came out pretty nicely after sending my daughter to the corner market!

Making Hollandaise Sauce with egg yolks and a whisk.

It does take a little work to make correctly and to be quite honest, the powdered/packaged variety is a good substitute for most home cooks, but nothing beats freshly made hollandaise.

Check out this article on making hollandaise from scratch: How to Make Hollandaise Sauce!

There are many people who enjoy cooking and working with food. From resourceful parents who can whip up a meal in 30 minutes with whatever happens to be in the fridge, to the person who simply likes to dabble with different combination’s of food and create new dishes. Many of these people are looking for new ideas to try or simply wish to improve their cooking skills to impress guests, friends and family, or impress their date with a fabulous meal.

The difference between the home cook and the gourmet chef really comes down to knowledge and experience and oftentimes practice makes perfect (especially when it comes to food). How many times have you or someone you know attempted to make a dish only to have it taste different than what you expected or not look the way you expected or simply be over or undercooked? It happens to even the best of gourmet chefs from time to time. Even the pros (you just don’t see their mistakes or they know how to fix a mistake quickly).

So how does the average person learn to cook like a gourmet?

1. Be open to learning new things: Try something new and creative that you haven’t tried before. Spend some time learning about the techniques involved and just go and do it! The more you try different techniques, the more you learn.
2. Go ahead and watch the cooking shows: there are some truly resourceful chefs out there now using many different styles and with the variety of shows on the Food Network and other channels, there’s plenty to learn by observing.
3. Experimentation: experimentation is the only way we come up with recipes, so go ahead and spice up that bland sauce or try something new for your old favorite, just remember to start small and tweak as you go along and reserve some extra time in case you overdo it.

I’ve created a new “lens” on Squidoo entitled How to Cook Gourmet Style that will show different things to learn, offer tips and how to’s on cooking like a gourmet and more. You can find this lens and other lens that we create by going here:

How to Cook Gourmet Style: 10 Things Every Aspiring Gourmet Chefs Should Learn

I’ll be creating different lens on gourmet cooking as time goes on and I’ll be posting the different lens here, but all will be indexed on the Professional Recipes Squidoo Page so you can check out all of our lens. I’ll also be adding the lens to the Gourmet Cooking section on Professional Recipes also so that you can simply subscribe to our blog for updates, or bookmark the Gourmet Cooking section on Professional Recipes and check out our articles as well.

Enjoy!